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Energy Source
Wood as an Energy Source
For thousands of years, the energy stored in wood and biomass has been used to cook food and provide comfort. More recently, wood heat has also been adapted to generate electricity and steam power.
Trees can be thought of as little power plants. Through photosynthesis, energy from sunlight is captured and stored in the growing tree. When the tree is harvested, that stored energy becomes available for beneficial uses.
Sawmills in California don't need to purchase their electricity--they generate their own. None of the log is wasted. Residues from logs such as waste bark, wood scraps and sawdust are gathered and combusted in tightly controlled industrial boilers. This produces steam as well as electricity, powering the sawmill's heavy machinery.
Some sawmills even sell excess power to the public power grid!
California currently has 28 operating biomass power plants. These specialized facilities take woody wastes and combust them to generate renewable, "green power". Biomass plants utilize excess sawmill wastes and chips from forest thinnings, as well as agricultural residues and urban "greenwastes".
Besides providing California's energy grid with 675 megawatts of reliable electricity (enough to power almost 675,000 homes per year), biomass plants have other key benefits. By combusting urban greenwastes, they conserve valuable landfill space. And by utilizing woody wastes that would otherwise be open-burned in forests and farm fields, tightly regulated biomass facilities improve California's air quality by drastically reducing the emissions of toxic air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and particulate matter.
Sources of Information:
California Biomass Energy Alliance
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